We have a standard that is long held and that serves us well: that there is a line between gratuitous insult and satire. Most of these are gratuitous insult.

That assertion was amply disproven within hours of its utterance, and in fact was pre-disproven by The Times' own decision just days earlier to not publish file photographs of a non-satirical statue of Mohammed that stood atop a Manhatttan Appellate Division Courthouse without incident for a half-century. If the Paper of Record was being honest about its "standard," Baquet would have said "We're more worried about the angry Muslims, sorry!"

Well, the Times has now basically admitted that very sentiment, albeit with typically pompous, obfuscatory verbiage. The paper's latest display of free-speech fecklessness begins with this image, published Monday:

There's no simple, unwavering formula we can apply in situations like this. We really don't want to gratuitously offend anyone's deeply held beliefs. That said, it's probably impossible to avoid ever offending anyone. We have to make these judgments all the time. Reasonable people might disagree about any one of them.

I don't think these situations — the Milwaukee [condom-Pope] artwork and the various Muhammad caricatures — are really equivalent. For one thing, many people might disagree, but museum officials clearly consider this Johnson piece to be a significant artwork. Also, there's no indication that the primary intent of the portrait is to offend or blaspheme (the artist and the museum both say that it is not intended to offend people but to raise a social question about the fight against AIDS). And finally, the very different reactions bear this out. Hundreds of thousands of people protested worldwide, for instance, after the Danish cartoons were published some years ago. While some people might genuinely dislike this Milwaukee work, there doesn't seem to be any comparable level of outrage.

Bolding mine, to highlight the precise terms of the capitulation.

So if you gin up a sufficient "level of outrage" (which, in the Danish cartoon example Corbett cites, includes the murder of more than 200 people), then we will prioritize your ideas about prior restraint. If, on the other hand, you are modern enough to eschew deadly rioting at the sight of contemporary or historical images demonstrating an intentional racist/collectivist animus against Jews, Japs, blacks or whoever else, then your editorial preferences are basically irrelevant. This is a perfect illustration of the Heckler's Veto, which you can read all about in the Reason archives here.

NYCourts.gov

To be fair to Corbett, he wasn't specifically referring here to the decision not to reprint the file photo of the Mohammed statue. To be even more fair, any intellectually honest "standards editor" would have, since that's the paper's operational standard, high-fallutin' concerns about "significant artwork" and "primary intent" be damned. Recall the NYT's own formulation in its article about the Mohammed courthouse statue in Manhattan:

[I]n 1955 […] the statue was finally removed out of deference to Muslims, to whom depictions of the prophet are an affront.

(For the same reason, The New York Times has chosen not to publish photographs of the statue with this article.)

Because "depictions of the prophet are an affront" to Muslims, the Times reasons (inaccurately, as any trip to the U.S. Supreme Court could confirm), the paper will not even show a historical photograph of a significant artwork whose primary intent was to honor Islam's prophet. All because a minority of contemporary Muslims have sporadically used a minority of available Mohammed representations to commit murder.

Contra Corbett, this does represent a "simple, unwavering formula," just not one that reflects well on the news judgment and editorial spine of the nation's allegedly premier newspaper. The deal goes like this: If you drive the death count high enough, the paper will capitulate to your publishing demands.

Such cowardice, if widespread enough, threatens us all, particularly those who live the most bravely. As I wrote on the awful day of January 7,

If more of us were brave, and refused to yield to the bomber's veto, and maybe reacted to these eternally recurring moments not by, say, deleting all your previously published Muhammad images, as the Associated Press is reportedly doing today, but rather by routinely posting newsworthy images in service both to readers and the commitment to a diverse and diffuse marketplace of speech, then just maybe Charlie Hebdo wouldn't have stuck out so much like a sore thumb. It's harder, and ultimately less rewarding to the fanatical mind, to hit a thousand small targets than one large one.

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“I don’t think these situations ? the Milwaukee [condom-Pope] artwork and the various Muhammad caricatures ? are really equivalent. For one thing, many people might disagree, but museum officials clearly consider this Johnson piece to be a significant artwork. Also, there’s no indication that the primary intent of the portrait is to offend or blaspheme (the artist and the museum both say that it is not intended to offend people but to raise a social question about the fight against AIDS).”

“I don’t think these situations ? the various Muhammad caricatures and the Milwaukee [condom-Pope] artwork ? are really equivalent. For one thing, museum officials might disagree, but many people clearly consider these caricatures to be significant artwork. Also, there’s no indication that their primary intent is to offend or blaspheme (the artists and the many people say that it is not intended to offend people but to raise a social question about freedom of speech).”

It’s almost as though they justify their inconsistencies by claiming that the victim groups they stand for, are beneath them. That sort of contempt wrapped in admiration is on display here in this article that was posted to the A.M. links this morning. *derp warning*

Excuse me for pointing out the obvious, but if New York prosecutors can ? with the strong backing and approval of the New York Times as well as most of the “First Amendment” community ? tell the difference between humorous satire that’s “just for fun” and inappropriately deadpan satire that crosses the line into rank criminality because it was allegedly written not merely to cause “momentary discomfort or embarrassment,” but to “harm a reputation,” then surely the distinguished editors of the Times can tell the difference between satire and “gratuitous insult.” See the documentation of America’s leading criminal satire case at:

P.s. I hear some uninformed “free speech” voices saying, “shout loudly enough, and we here in America will prosecute. This is a great tool for suppressing unwanted academic criticism. Heck, it’s even more convincing than the heckler’s veto.” These people are simply unwilling to face the fact that distinctions have to be made, that not only the Times, but the entire nation has to have “standards,” and that no one should engage in any kind of triggering speech that we really don’t like and think that action will not be taken to suppress it.

I heard from a Muslim man I am acquainted with that the reason they don’t want any images of Muhammad displayed is because he was a homosexual pedophile who liked to wear panty hose, dresses and makeup. I’m just saying. (Gosh, I sure hope I didn’t offend anyone. Please don’t kill me!)

Wouldn’t it be great if the NYT was just honest enough to say “we don’t post Muhammed stuff because we are scared they are going to bomb us or shoot us or behead us but we will post stuff insulting Judaism or Christianity because they won’t do anything about it.”?

Then they would have to admit that Islamic terrorism is clearly a greater threat than their fantasies about Right Wing Militia Hate Groups, and shit that ain’t happening.

More importantly they’d have to concede that Muslims aren’t the perfect victims of white male Anglo-Saxon super-bigotry. Or maybe they’d be conceding that Islamic culture is just tad bit barbaric, owing to it’s wanton use and support of violence by practitioners. They might even be forced to concede that the reason Islamic countries are so utterly fucked up might have something to do with cultural problems, and not the much more favored “Anglo-Saxon super-racist colonialism theory”.

How about – “We’d publish the cartoons but we know for a fact our stupid Government is spending so much of its time and money tracking phone calls from Grandmas to their Grandchildren at Christmas they don’t have time to actual track people who might actually do some harm. Consequently if we publish them our staff, whom we actually care about, might be killed just doing their jobs. And, that isn’t acceptable to us. Get back to us when the government actually does its job properly.”

I don’t know about you, but I agree with the Church. My seed is too extremely precious (and, dare I say, somewhat coveted) to be denied to the world by something that isn’t even environmentally friendly.

I think most people here get the point – the NYT chickens out re the Mohammad (PB&J) pictures.

I could spend time defending the Church’s teaching on condoms, but instead I’ll just note that, yes, the Benedict condom-picture is offensive to faithful Catholics. Also, the claim that they’re just trying to raise AIDS awareness and not be offensive…if anyone believe *that,* then have a great bargain for you. There’s this bridge in Brooklyn which just went on the market…

Look, all you “artists,” I understand that you want to be transgressive and everything by insulting religions that won’t retaliate by violence, but, please, don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining. Don’t express shock that people are insulted by…your deliberate insults.

Maybe we can do the same to you. Perhaps a picture of atheistic artists burning in the fires of Hell. When challenged, we can answer, “oh we didn’t mean any offense, we’re just trying to raise awareness of the blah blah.”

I’m an atheist and I wouldn’t give a shit about such a picture either. Then again, I’ve been hanging around extremist sites like this one and absorbing radical ideas like “if a piece of art offends you, don’t look at it”.

Catholics had their shit together for a thousand years, imprisoning, torturing, and killing huge numbers of people who disagreed with them. The violence and genocides of Christianity, and in particular Catholicism, make modern Islamic extremism look like child’s play.

Let’s all hope we can heap the same kind of scorn on Islam when it has been castrated and defanged, like we have done with the Catholic church.

I’ll admit that I don’t think the issue is bravery vs. cowardice. I think the NYT and their ilk loathe with a passion any cultural heritage of the west while they view approvingly any cultural practices rooted outside the West.

Of course, the NYT in its craven absurdity also neglects to consider that the image that whose desecration sparks violent turmoil is the one that absolutely needs to be mercilessly mocked while the image whose desecration sparks only mild complaints does not.

And another nail in the coffin of postmodern art and its bullshit pretenses to avant-garde or edgy expression. Western postmodern art is just historical guilt writ large and lacks the temerity to insult the vastly inferior cultures and traditions that litter this rock.

I doubt it’s even fear of retaliation that unpins this, as indicated elsewhere here by PZ. That merely gives them the plausible excuse of a heckler’s veto where the reality is that they find every religious tradition within the west deplorable and worthy of castigation while every religious tradition outside the west is noble and beautiful and an example of the better parts of humanity reaching for a deeper purpose in life unlike us vile evil materialistic and vulgar pasty-skins.

Obviously I’m aware of the origins of Christianity/Catholicism, but its historical practice is primarily a Western one. So much so that when one mentions the term Christendom, it evokes almost exclusively images of medieval Western Europe.

If I were a Catholic who was highly offended by this, I would troll the NYT by pointing out something they’re apparently oblivious to: Catholicism is largely a dead letter in the countries of Western Europe and its only major holdouts in this world are the noble third world of South America and Africa. Therefore, the NYT is racist and dislikes people darker than themselves. QED

IIRC the latest conclave there was a rumor that one of the African bishops was a front runner for the nod. But the majority of practicing Catholics in the world today are in Central and South America, so they had to go that route.

Interestingly enough, the week after the new pope was chosen I was golfing with a septuagenarian Irish priest who had spent the past 40 years in South America. He referred to Pope Francis as a fascist. This Irishman was a liberation theologist to the core. I joked with him that I kept slicing my tee shots because I needed to balance out his far left views.

In his defense, it was a muni course. But yes, it was an eerie experience. It was also on April 20th 2012 so I was considerably baked. He claimed they transferred him up here because they needed a priest who was fluent in Spanish for the congregation he would be heading to. I did wonder if his transfer was rooted in other reasons…. proclivities if you will. Though I doubt they’d send him to the States were that the case.

Are you talking about the West’s actual religious tradition (i.e., heathenism/paganism)

If only we’d stayed on that route. I wonder if millions of people wouldn’t have perished in Abrahamic religious wars. Indo-European religion was rather cosmopolitan by the time the Christians were martyring themselves.

Yes, yes, that’s it, those Christians were just voluntarily self-immolating and jumping into those lions’ mouths just to show those cosmopolitan Indo-Europeans!

If you’ll recall, the martyred early Christians in question were rather tenacious in their unwillingness to pretend not to be Christians or to half-heartedly renounce their faith, at least in public, to spare themselves death. As the story goes anyhow.

I don’t think you realize how catastrophic the religious wars like that which afflicted Germany and France really were. The scope of the conflict involved every man, woman and child as potential combatants. Entire German towns and cities were unpeopled and in excess of a generation lived under wartime famine conditions. In terms of the proportion of the population that was killed and displaced, the second world war is hardly even comparable. Germany lost about 40% of it’s population by war’s end.

And no actually, there were never any pagan religious wars of that scale and scope. The Anglo-Saxons and the Norse weren’t exactly fighting over the issue of whether their chief deity’s name was Woden or Odin. Nor were they murdering babies because they were born into a rival faith who thought Cronos’ son was the essence of his father or some such vague nonsense.

Hmmmm. There is evidence that the Norse and Danes did specifically target churches and monasteries, partially because that is where the money was at, but also because they felt Christianity was a threat to their religion. There is also evidence that earlier Germanic tribes such as the Anglo-Saxons and Franks did target Christian churches in the conquest of Romano-Celtic societies in England and France. The sagas tell us about Danes crucifying Christians to see if they would rise again. Also, there weren’t the religious wars on that scope partially because the Pagan Germanic tribes tended to be much more independent and smaller, they were not full fledged nation states like the Christian and Muslim medieval kingdoms. Also, at least part of the war between the Spartans and the Athenians was over religion. And no matter if Roman conquests were religiously based or not, the subjugated people, who often were sold into slavery or worse, probably could care less.

Pagan wars of religion, while not completely unknown, are very rare historically because most of those belief systems were not only polytheistic but much less restrictive. Also, regionally there wasn’t a lot of variance between gods, so somebody from central modern-day Germany familiar with Wotan would recognize Odin as essentially the same. Besides, the Abrahamic idea of one god who rules over everything and who you’re supposed to worship because he said so and not expect anything in return is very different from typical pagan cosmologies. You made offerings or said prayers to specific gods for specific favors or to avoid specific hardships, and if someone in the neighboring village (or the guy next door) ignored the gods then that was on them.

And yeah, like Free says, the Thirty Years War was the most devastating conflict in Europe in terms of loss of life until WWI. The European wars of religion were catastrophic, and while there were political elements the primary conflict was about Protestantism vs Catholicism. There was never anything even remotely like that in the pagan world, for a number of reasons.

The reality is the Progressive Theocracy recognizes it’s true enemy as Freedom, largely embodied in Western civilization, and particularly the Anglosphere, and while Freedom has some life, they’ll give aid and comfort to the enemy of their true enemy.

while the image whose desecration sparks only mild complaints does not.

You’re saying that mockery should serve a utilitarian purpose. Let’s examine that idea.

Quite apart from the enormous power it has wielded and the widespread bloodshed the Catholic church has caused in the past, the fact is that in the West, many people still view the Pope as an authority on morality and believe he is a “good person”. Public disrespect and mockery of the Pope will hopefully disabuse people of those erroneous beliefs, and they seem to be quite effective at it.

On the other hand, I doubt many non-Muslim Americans have any respect for Islamic clerics, so mockery of Islam or its figures is unlikely to change their minds. And Muslims are not going to be swayed by it either because they are going to view such mockery as simple xenophobia, something that doesn’t get them to change their minds.

Mockery is a good tool for people who want to oppose Catholicism, it simply isn’t effective for people who want to oppose Islam.

Is it just physical cowardice, though? I don’t think if, say, new-day Tilly leads a mercenary band that targets the NYT and WaPo offices that all of a sudden journalists will discover respect for Catholicism. Rather, they’ll stand on the pile of corpses to grandstand like usual.

And that is probably that. Regardless of any risk, Islam is above criticism among the right-thinking people in a way Christianity is not because Muslims are Designated Victim Class. Judaism only gets invoked when you need to bash Christians, or Israel, and Hinduism, Shintoism and Buddhism aren’t even treated as religions.

Agree with both of you. There are a few leftists on record as being scared to mock Islam (Sarah Silverman for one). But a Charlie Hebdo-style slaughter at the Times would lead to outraged demands for silencing of right-wing “hate” groups and massive gun control. They would not stop printing images which disparaged Christianity.

Islam is above criticism among the right-thinking people in a way Christianity is not because Muslims are Designated Victim Class

First of all, despite his delusions of grandeur, the Pope does not stand for Christianity.

Second, there are other motivations at work too. I despise Catholicism and Islam equally. But mocking the Pope is effective in diminishing his authority and respect; mocking Mohammed is not.

That has less to do with “designated victim classes” (something Catholics have been trying to claim for themselves), and more with the fact that the Pope is alive and that Mohammed is dead; and with the fact that mockery of Catholicism is interpreted as disrespect from the culture that Catholicism is part of, while mockery of Islam is interpreted as simple xenophobia.

Here in Downtown LA, every first Thursday of the month they do an artwalk where passerby walk along the streets passing galleries and aspiring artists and homeless people attempting to peddle their meaningless crap that passes for art in the postmodern post-sanity West.

If I had any skill for painting/drawing whatsoever, I would go out there with a painting of tranny Mohammad (pretty much just picture that Eurovision winning thing with traditional bedouin garb) for sale to put a mirror in front of these faux transgressives and expose them for the sham they are. As it happens, I may just have to order a few buckets from Home Depot and a few Korans from Amazon and then drink a lot of water the night before.

There is, however, a difference between the condom mosaic and the Jyllands Posten cartoons: the cartoons were newsworthy. An uninformed reader had to see thee cartoons to make a judgement regarding the story. The condom mosaic of Pope Benedict would be newsworthy if militant Catholics had bombed an art gallery or something … otherwise it is just a vulgar celebration of anti-Catholic sentiment.

They needed some sort of sophistry to pretend that the decision wasn’t based on cowardice, since that would make it difficult to preen themselves for their courage every time they mock Christians who won’t shoot back at them.

They’re scared. That’s all there’s to it. The Islamists have a long history of attacking journalists, the NYT knows it. If they were honest, they would come out and say “We might be attacked if we publish anti muslim cartoons” but that would make them look like a bunch of Islamophobes!

So they have to trot out some tortured language and logic in comparing levels of outrage, in which they admit that they fear some form outrage over another without blaming Islam.

There’s nothing the left hates more than a Christian. OTOH, they love everyone who isn’t a religion, no matter how vile their actions are. Enslave women, murder children, kill gays, hey, it’s no big deal as long as it’s no one white (in the Anglo-Saxon sense) or Christian.

Slavery 150 years ago, still the most important topic ever. Slavery in the modern world, well, it doesn’t matter, because the people doing it aren’t white Christians.

When you control the culture as the liberal/socialists have for the last 60+ years, i.e. MSM, academia, unions, television. radio, Hollywood, newsprint, radio, fashion, music, etc., you can do whatever you want.

Conservatives should have been a lot wiser 60 years ago and they could have control of the culture now. Of course they would have had to get rid of the evangelical/right wing faction of the party but who needs them anyway?

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Let us applaud the honesty of the now-closed Boston Phoenix, the leftist, alternative tabloid, which admitted that it refused to publish the Danish Muhammad cartoons because it feared violent retaliation, http://thephoenix.com/boston/n…..d-of-pain/

Invoking personal courage, risk, and the defense of free speech when standing up to the Catholic Church on social issues and the Religious Right is just a “safe pose” for many leftists.

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